It is officially that time of year – time for the great food blogger cookie swap! Our house looks forward to this time of year like nothing else. We stalk our mailbox for our 3 delicious boxes of cookies, homemade by a genius food blogger. I will detail the cookies we were fortunate enough to receive as well as the bloggers they came from in another post but know that they were super delicious! For our batch of cookies we decided to make Pecan and Almond Shortbread cookies. Shortbread cookies are some of our favorite and we thought we would go a little nutty and throw in both pecans and almonds to see how the combo went, and it was a winner! These were great cookies, year-round, and were quite a hit with our visitors, and hopefully our cookies swap partners liked them too!

Ingredients:

Directions:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 F. I started by roasting my pecans and then chopped them up instead of purchasing them pre-chopped or roasted. Pecans were roasted at 350 F for 5- 6 minutes.

Mix the butter and sugar until they are combined and then add the vanilla and almond extracts. In a separate bowl sift together the flour and salt,and add them to the butter/sugar mixture. Add the pecans and mix (on low speed if you are using a mixer) until the dough starts to come together. Move dough to a floured surface and roll into a long cylinder or log about 2″ thick. Wrap in saran-wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Cut the dough into hockey-puck or small discs. The thicker the discs the thinker your cookie. We found that they did not rise much. Bake the cookies on a parchment paper lined sheet and pop them into the oven!

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Once they have cooled off feel free to devour them!